All posts tagged Michael Cimino

We’ve all heard those stories of debut films that catapult their filmmakers to instant success. Think Reservoir Dogs, El Mariachi, Clerks, American Beauty, etc. But what about those times when a film ends up costing its helmers everything? Here’s a look at a few films, some of them masterful, some awful, that had profound effects on the careers of those that brought them to life. Spanning 80 years, let’s look at them in chronological order.

The earliest film on this list is arguably the greatest of them all. Jean Vigo’s masterpiece of beautiful and tragic romance cost him not only his career, but his life. Vigo was already ill with tuberculosis when he began work on what was to be his only feature film. As it takes place on a barge, travelling the Seine, conditions were cold and often wet and Vigo’s health deteriorated to the point that he directed while bedridden for large portions of the shoot. Refusing to compromise on his vision, he insisted on finishing his work. After shooting his health never recovered and he died at the age of 29, before the final cut was completed by his faithful editor. L’Atalante is one of those films that manages to somehow define cinema itself while one watches it. It is rough, naturalistic and unsentimental but somehow dreamlike, lyrical and emotional. A glorious film that makes us wonder what else this great voice might have produced.

Michael Powell, of legendary Powell and Pressburger fame, found his career destroyed (certainly in Britain) by the immensely controversial release of his psychosexual thriller Peeping Tom. Calls for the films to be banned and destroyed were not uncommon, even from professional critics, and although the film is now understood as a brazen masterwork, at the time its story of a troubled protagonist who films his own murders of beautiful women before watching them back was altogether too much for the British public. Filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese (whose editor Thelma Schoonmaker is Powell’s widow) and critics such as Roger Ebert have championed the film as a singular achievement. But for Powell, who had brought gloss and erotic prestige to a remarkable string of films in the 40s and 50s, this was a commercial and critical failure from which he was never to recover, directing only 3 more theatrical releases in the remaining 30 years of his life.

Continuing the theme of unappreciated genius, this is one of my favourite films ever. Tati spent 3 years making this, his magnum opus, for which he built several blocks of his version of Paris in order to be able to move freely and stage things as he’d like, along with its own power plant. This was nicknamed “Tativille” and, coupled with his insistence on shooting with 70mm film and stereophonic sound, made production an arduous process. Budget overruns made financial success an imperative and when the film came out it didn’t come close to recouping its cost. Tati insisted it only be screened in cinema’s with 70mm capabilities and audiences resented his relegation of his signature character, Hulot, to a supporting role. Although this failure is said to have haunted Tati both professionally and personally for the rest of his life, Playtime is an utterly astonishing film. Its scope is unbelievably ambitious and its jokes are complex visual structures that reward multiple viewings, which also reveal the powerful social critique Tati wove into the benign comedy.

Fresh of 1978’s Oscar-winning The Deer Hunter, Cimino set out to make one of the most ambitious westerns ever. Budgets ballooned and studio execs interfered and the end result was a colossal mess, a muddled saga of economic power struggles. Cimino’s dictatorial demeanour on-set and his wanton cruelty to animals were just the tip of the iceberg as the film ran four times over-budget and weeks over-schedule. Upon release, this film was such a critical and commercial failure that not only did Cimino’s career nosedive (having been one of Hollywood’s brightest young stars) but his studio, United Artists, collapsed. So if you’re looking for who to thank for the current Hollywood model of studio power over directors – look no further. Recent re-edits of Heaven’s Gate have seen it reappraised as a lost masterpiece but, while I’m as big a supporter of an epic Marxist western as anyone, a great film this is not. Willem Dafoe’s film debut can only go so far to make up for the lost hours of my life…

My favourite artist is Tom Waits, who contributed the soundtrack to this one. Terri Garr was also unreasonably attractive. Neither of those things can mitigate the disaster of this one. Coppola had come off the legendary shoot of Apocalypse Now and one can only assume his truly unbelievable run of 1970s filmmaking had burnt him out because this tale of love lost and regained is a real mess. It is almost hard to believe just how relentlessly brilliant Coppola was in the 70s because post-One from the Heart, which left him in massive debt and forced him to close his studio Zoetrope Studios, you can count on one hand the good films he’s made (here they are: The Outsiders, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Godfather Part III if we forget the first two and the fact that by Coppola’s own admission debt from One from the Heart forced him to direct it at all). I think it’s fair to say that this massive miscalculation signalled the end of one of cinema’s great voices.

This one is a little different. Sometimes, a film can be destructive by bringing about success that hasn’t been earned. Who hasn’t seen this film? Who doesn’t love it? It’s brilliant, warped, funny, oh-so-dark and all the more brilliant for being a debut work. That Kelly was able to successfully manage a $4.5m budget on his first try is impressive. But when success like this comes round and studios give you carte blanche to bring them another hit…let’s just say that if Pulp Fiction is one end of this spectrum, Southland Tales is the other. Tales is a spectacularly awful film, all misanthropic jock posing and directorial arrogance. It is a complete mess, a poster-child for why all artists need an editor, and bombed massively in both critical and financial senses. Its craziness is counteracted only by Kelly’s third and most recent feature, The Box, starring blandest-leading-duo-of-2009 Cameron Diaz and James Marsden and a creepy Frank Langella. Both of these subsequent films underwhelmed hugely and it remains to be seen if Kelly truly did use up his brilliance on one gem of a film or if he plans to mature and bring us more.

It is one of cinema’s tragedies that this turd, which manages to ruin both a magnificent graphic novel series and a slew of literary heroes for future generations, will also go down as Sean Connery’s final film. Blade director Norrington has not directed a film since and seems to have nothing on the horizon, which is just as well if this is any indication of his future cinematic offerings. Like a Victorian Expendables, this is all macho bombast and wafer-thin plot and seems designed to introduce a dazzling array of characters with no point save future installments that, thanks to its magnificent tanking, will never come to be (hopefully). I think it’s better for everyone out there if all involved with this one just take some time away from making films – a lifetime should do the trick.

Following the re-issue of Michael Cimino’s flawed opus, Heaven’s Gate, comes the crisp Blu-Ray revival of his debut Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (also available on DVD).

The star-name here, however, was not the tyro director, but its grizzled star, Clint Eastwood. This is an odd-couple-road-movie-cum-comic-crime-caper concerning Clint’s stolid old crook and Jeff Bridges’ eager chancer.

It’s an enjoyably hokey adventure in which our heroes stay on the move pursued by inept gunmen on both sides of the law.

This is Clint in comic knockabout mode clearly indicating his move toward the slapstick orangutan hi-jinks of Every Which Way But Loose and its successors (that also featured the ‘just been caught with his pants down’ face of Geoffrey Lewis). Both Eastwood and Bridges add weight to underwritten roles. Clint’s Thunderbolt is gruff gravitas in slacks, a tough individualist forced into sharing a ride. As his fresh-faced companion, Bridges’ Lightfoot is an affront to this typical Eastwood persona. He showers Thunderbolt with love and affection – determined to make the granite face crack a smile.

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is 1970s America in the sunshine: the glory of the open road, the windswept haircuts, the Honky Tonk soundtrack, a brief appearance by Gary Busey, and an attitude to women that’s equivalent to a seaside dirty postcard. In fact the whole venture is a postcard from another time with lovingly captured panoramic vistas and an enduring holiday mood.

For a director known for his excesses this is a modest but defiantly epic work. There was no way Clint would put up with doing fifty takes and whilst this film belongs more to the star than it’s writer/director, Cimino does bring a sure-handed grandness to proceedings. Although very different in tone, you can’t help but notice the hints of Cimino’s future work: the close attention on a few circling characters all set against a vast canvas; the adoration of the American landscape and push toward the mythical. Despite the quality on show here you get the nagging feeling that Cimino already had one eye on the icy peaks of Pennsylvania and those elusive deer. Great things were to come and you can sense the optimism in the air.